IC 417 and NGC 1931 in Auriga

[budguinn]

hello friends,

This has been an ongoing project since the first of December, 2006. This is a beautiful complex in Auriga...it is a beautiful next door neighbor of IC 405 and IC 410 and this shot even has a part of M38 in it (wished I'd framed it just a tad differently.

This is one of the dimmest objects that I have shot....it took a tremendous amount of signal to reduce the noise to an acceptable level. Probably the biggest problem was the fact that the seeing was so poor and the moisture in the air was around 90%+ every night.



larger sizes here:

Telescope: Tak Epsilon 180ED
Camera: SXV-M25C Idas and Astronomik 13nm
6 hours of Hydrogen Alpha Acquired in AstroArt
6 hours of RGB data acquired in AstroArt
Processed in ImagesPlus, AstroArt4.0, PSCS2 and Carboni's AstroTools

The ha was added to the red channel at about 60% and to the lum channel at about 80%. I used Noel's Astro tools for noise removal...the "Deep Space Noise Removal" has to be the best method on earth. There is more ha in the background that I suppressed somewhat in the interest of noise removal and contrast.

thanks all for looking, and comments and suggestions are always appreciated,

[BT Technologies]

WOW Bud. At first I thought that there was a lot of "noise" in the image until I clicked on your full screen image. The "noise" is a whole bunch of stars!!!!

Awesome!!!!

[budguinn]

thanks, Brian......sometimes all of those stars get in the way of the nebula....what's up with that?